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be understood, according to the context, as ranging from shock, contempt, and malice to righteous rage and indignation”.76 Nevertheless, nemesis also connects with aidōs since: “(nemesis) is a reaction, and what it psychologically consists of properly depends on what particular violation of aidōs it is a reaction to”.77 In any case, both aidōs and nemesis are concepts linked to social relationships.
There are also several episodes in the Odyssey where the sense of shame78 to the Other contemporary acts as a regulator of behavior and as a feeling that appeals to the responsibility towards that Other. In Od. 18.220-225 Penelope reprimands her son Telemachus for mistreating the guest and says: “That must be your outrage and shame (aischos) as people see it”.79 Other examples include when Odysseus hopes that the gods punis h the suitors for mistreating the beggars without even showing an iota of shame (aidōs);80 or when Telemachus expresses the shame that he would feel (aideomai) if he expelled her mother from home against her will.81
The sense of shame affects not only males but also women. For instance, in Il. 3.410-412 Helena refuses to sleep with Paris due to the shame (nemesētos) she would feel if the Trojan women found out. In Od. 6.281-288 Nausicaa changes her behavior depending on what the other members of the community would say if they saw her committing certain actions. In Od. 16.73-75 Telemachus says that his mother hesitated about whether to remarry or wait for Odysseus, keeping “faith with her husband’s bed, and regard the voice of the people” (εὐνὴν τ᾽ αἰδομένη πόσιος δήμοιό τε φῆμιν). This idea is repeated in Od. 19.526-527.
The former examples show the two sides of the sense of shame, it is a feeling of embarrassment but also a sense of respect and responsibility to the Other as well. Shame has an influence on people’s behavior who conduct themselves according to norms that would meet the approval of members in their group.
Therefore, it is normal for military leaders to appeal to this concept to incite the people to fight with courage, or for a mother to use it to change her grown-up son’s behavior.
76 Williams 1993, 80.
77 Ibid.
78 In the poems, “shame” sometimes is named by “αἰδώς” and other times by “αἶσχος”.
79 Od. 18.225.
80 Od. 20.169-171.
81 Od. 20.343-344.
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As with every moral term in Homer, aidōs is also a social one. For this (and the following) we are indebted to Benveniste82, stating that within a community aidōs defines, for example, the sense of responsibility that those who have a superior status have towards their social inferiors. The responsibility linked to aidōs is also shown in the episodes in which the warriors fight in order to get the armor or the body of fallen comrades: Homeric heroes are responsible for seeking an honorable burial to the dead, or to prevent the enemy’s dead from staying with their armor. As told, aidōs always works toward the Other of the same group, with whom an identity is shared, but there is a peculiarity: the opinion of women also can produce aidōs in males, as we see in Hector’s speech,83 as another aspect of the responsibility of the superior to those who are their inferior. Or, as Altuna has put it,
(…) the person who fails to his duty – or what he considers as such – towards the Other or towards his community, can feel two kinds of frustration: first, the guilt, linked to the inner self, and the second one, the shame, closely linked to the outside, the public aspect of transgression”84
As I have mentioned above, following Dodds, Homeric characters do not feel fault, but only shame, namely, an external feeling which connected the people with their Others. Shame appears when the offense is seen by others and it is perpetuated if witnesses who spread it to the rest of the group. The social rejection that this generates is feared more than anything by the Homeric heroes, and it is what they want to avoid by all means. In addition, it is worth bringing into focus Williams’ thoughts, who says that the sense of shame in Homeric world does not only imply the fear of being seen for the Other.85 Williams proposes an interesting exercise: let’s imagine that Achilles knew that nobody would find out if, in the evening, he went to Agamemnon’s tent to steal all the treasures that Agamemnon had offered him through the embassy86 and Achilles had refused. It is obvious that, given Achilles’ character, he would have preferred dying rather than doing such dishonorable act; even though there would be no consequences for him and nobody
82 Benveniste 1973.
83 Il. 6.441-443, 22.104-106 84 Altuna 2010, 214; my translation.
85 Williams 1993, 81-82.
86 Il. 9.180 et sq.
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would have known. According to Williams, that happens because the person would imagine the act under consideration as an inner Other would look at him. This Other would make feel him that his act is shameful and a violation of social norms.
To sum up, Homeric heroes do not consider whether an action is good or bad depending on their own point of view, but, in any action, they imagine an inner Other as witness and judge, even for acts which nobody sees.
Altuna, in her study of moral categories of the human face, speaks about the connection between shame and honor:
If the honor, the fact of having a good reputation, a good name, implies to walk tall with the head up high, the opposite, namely dishonor, bad reputation or the loss of the good name, implies to look down, unable to look the eyes of the Other.87
As said at the beginning of this section, acknowledgment is another category on which the relationship with the contemporaneous Other is based. But what does this ‘acknowledgment’ mean? The Homeric man finds himself in the Other, he needs the the Other to recognize because it is the only way to truly know himself. As Vernant pinpointed, the Other works as a mirror in which each person recognizes himself, in the same way that the disapproval of the Other can cause a sense of shame.88 Acknowledgment and shame are both external categories, which rely on the perception and approval of others. Sartre had seen this connection between both, writing that:
I am ashamed of what I am. (…) I am ashamed of myself as I appear to the Other (…) Shame is shame of oneself before the Other; these two structures are inseparable. (…) Shame is by nature recognition. I recognize that I am as the Other sees me.89
Homeric heroes seek this recognition both through their heroic deeds – told by the aedos – as well as through the collection of wealth, which are just the external symbol of their success as warriors, and guarantee them the respect of others in their communities.
In this sense, acknowledgment could be also understood as “public honor
87 Altuna 2010, 214; my translation.
88 Vernant 1989, 118-19.
89 Sartre 1943, 301-2.
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for the living hero”, as timē.90 It is the lack of acknowledgment from Achilles’
companions (especially, Agamemnon) that makes him, the best of the Achaeans, refuse to continue fighting in the war. Acknowledgment by others is necessary for a hero in order to keep his fame and in order for this fame to be sung by the aedos, which makes him immortal.91 Thus, in Book 9 of the Odyssey, the hero, even though his comrades insist that he should not be provocative to the cyclops, does not hesitate to affirm his identity to Polyphemus, and he does that, precisely, in order for his feat to be remembered for posterity:
Cyclops, if any mortal man even asks you who it was that inflicted upon your eye this shameful blinding, tell him that you were blinded by Odysseus, sacker of cities.
Laertes is his father, and he makes his home in Ithaka.92
If he had not identified himself, his deed would not have been associated with his legacy, it would have fallen into oblivion, and that means death.
To sum up, acknowledgment appears through the prizes of war or the memories their deeds cement in their reputations and legacies. Still, it depends on the Other. At the same time, acknowledgment is also useful for the hero in order to know who he is: by what the Others say about him, he can recognize himself.
The former is explained by Redfield:
Nor can the two kinds of reward be set in the simple contrast of the social versus the material: the prize itself may have kleos and confer a kleos, and a man is famous both for what he is and for what he has.93
90 Rose 2012, 121.
91 “The hero is between god and man. Men die, while the gods live forever: the hero, however, does both.
After death he is immortal in two different senses: immortal in cult and immortal in song. He receives timē, cultic observance, and kleos, the fame of those whose stories are told by the bards”, Redfield’s foreword to Nagy 1979, x.
92 Od. 9.502-505.
93 Redfield 1975, 33.
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